Faith Is Not for the Timid

Christianity is frightening. It is not for the timid.

The ancients knew they could not control their world and thus offered sacrifices to the gods in an attempt to exert some control.

We moderns have deceived ourselves. We think that we control ourselves, our environment, the things and even the people that surround us.

It is this, our self-deception, which makes Christianity so wild and dangerous.

That faith can be only the gift of God emphasizes the scandal of our human condition ~ the scandal of our absolute dependence on Him. I have to depend completely upon what very largely I do not know and cannot control. ~ H.A. Williams

This giving up of ourselves to that which we cannot control is terrifying. It is a blind leap into the void.

Yet our belief that we can have some control over our own lives is really just a shutting of our eyes to reality, a whistling in the dark.

We cannot control what happens to us. We are able to control only our response to what happens, and a giving over of ourselves to that which we cannot understand means giving over the only thing we are capable of controlling.

It is a giving up of all control. And in return, it is a wild kind of freedom, a dangerous adventure to which the ending is known but not all of the steps along the way.